A Culinary Campaign
by Lys ap Adin
Summary: The best way to get to the heart is between the ribs and up. But there are other routes, too. KHRfest, Yamamoto x Bianchi, smut.


**Title:** A Culinary Campaign**  
Pairings:** Yamamoto/Bianchi**  
Summary:** The best way to get to the heart is between the ribs and up. But there are other routes, too.**  
Notes:** A hopelessly belated entry for round four of KHRfest, prompt III-26: Yamamoto/Bianchi – cooking rivalry; "s/he'd gone too far this time; this was now war". Adult for smut. Shamelessly fluffy. Diverges from canon at ch. 282. 7201 words.

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* * *

A Culinary Campaign**

_Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all. – Harriet Van Horne_

Bianchi had been amused by the tray of onigiri, with its neatly shaped triangles of rice with perfectly aligned pieces of nori and precisely placed umeboshi, and had made the mistake of telling Yamamoto so when he showed up on her doorstep with them. She'd been less amused and more puzzled by his subsequent efforts—a salad whose every piece of cucumber was uniformly shredded and perfectly dressed, then a tiny bento full of croquettes nestled against each other, their crisp outsides a crunchy contrast to the creamy interiors. When she asked what on earth he thought he was doing, he explained that he was learning to cook, and added (with a proud grin and one of the laughs that she knew drove Hayato up the wall) that she knew cooking, so she'd been the best person to judge his efforts, right?

Which she was, of course. Bianchi _was_ the Poison Scorpion and knew from food if anyone did. Better still, they were in a lull between attempts to kill Tsuna or otherwise interfere with the Vongola, so it wasn't like she had anything better to do than let Yamamoto come by every few days with some new dish for her to sample. His initial efforts were simple enough, but he started branching out quickly and was bringing her boxes filled with more complicated meals, proper bentos as best as she understood the practice, in short order. The food was good, anyway, and came nestled into the little partitions of the bentos and cut into fanciful patterns—flowers and cute animal faces, and once a not-bad attempt at a scorpion.

Bianchi's initial amusement faded into something like disquiet as Yamamoto progressed to more complicated things—soups and marinated beef and little stir-fries that balanced the crunch of the vegetables against salty-sweet glazes and the richness of caramelized meat on the tongue. It wasn't that Yamamoto had plunged into cooking like he'd plunged into the mafia game and learning the sword, head-first and no looking back, that bothered her. It was that he did it with the same élan as any of his other skills, showing every bit as much natural aptitude in the kitchen as he had with the sword. Yamamoto was, she had to admit while she nibbled on his first careful efforts at sushi (a tidy little set of cucumber rolls), not entirely untalented in the kitchen.

It was only to be expected, she told herself. He'd grown up under his father's feet, watching him handle his restaurant—he'd said as much, when she'd asked. It was only natural that he had a knack for cooking, just from watching.

She was a lot less amused the day Yamamoto brought her something that was best described as some kind of _fusion_ cooking, a tuna steak that had been seared and then dressed with ginger and lime, with silky noodles to go with it. "Branching out?" she asked him, after she'd told him there was too much lime in the dressing.

Yamamoto laughed cheerfully at the criticism, the way he always did, and shrugged at the question. "Way I figure it, why limit yourself?"

Bianchi thought, later, that she should have seen it coming then. But she'd never much good at seeing things coming, so she watched Yamamoto's efforts at getting creative cautiously at first, then a little nervously, perhaps even enviously—he really _was_ pretty good in the kitchen, at least when it came to figuring out what flavors would go together and sing on the tongue, even if he did have too heavy a hand with the sauces sometimes.

But she didn't worry about it, not least because there were always more important things to think about, like the batch of yakuza twerps who'd decided they weren't adverse to being subcontractors for the Cetrulli. Keeping Tsuna in one piece and pointing out what a bad idea tangling with the Vongola was kept them all busy for a little while. Yamamoto didn't bring her any samples of his cooking until well after the dust settled, but when he did, it was with a bright grin as he offered her a thermos and said, "Try this."

Unwary, Bianchi accepted the thermos and unscrewed the cap, and was immediately assaulted by the scent of _home_, tomatoes and onion and _Jesus Christ_—"What the _hell_?" she demanded, staring into the thermos of soup.

There was one thing Yamamoto wasn't good at, and that was parsing warning signs. His grin just got wider. "Go on, try it," he urged. "I want to know if I got it right."

"No, what the hell, this is—" There was something weird seething inside her gut, something outraged.

Yamamoto nodded. "Italian," he said, clearly beyond proud of himself. "I thought I should learn that next." He waved his hands at her. "Go on, try it!"

This time he'd gone too far. In her hands, the contents of the thermos glooped and began to fizz.

Yamamoto blinked as his smile turned puzzled. "I don't think it's supposed to do that." He took a prudent step back as the thermos began to overflow. "Bianchi-san, is everything—"

"Go away," Bianchi said.

Yamamoto opened his mouth, looked at her face, shut it again with a quick nod, and went.

The thermos was going to be a loss; the poison cooking was already warping the metal and eating through the plastic. Bianchi felt distantly embarrassed by that; she hadn't had a spontaneous conversion so bad since she'd first started getting a grip on her skills. But it was hard for the embarrassment to penetrate through her outrage.

How _dare_ he!

This, she resolved, dumping the thermos and its erstwhile contents into a trashcan, was going to mean _war_.

* * *

She'd listened to Hayato's bitching about how Yamamoto Takeshi just didn't know when to fucking _quit_ on more than one occasion, and had always had an abstract appreciation for the accuracy of that assessment. Knowing it and experiencing it were two different things, however. Bianchi stared at Yamamoto in disbelief when he showed up again before she'd managed to come to grips with what, precisely, she was going to do to him. His amiable grin was firmly in place and he was carrying another thermos. "So I guess I didn't get the last one right," he announced. "I asked around a little. This one should be better."

"No chance," Bianchi told him, hands folded together behind her back. "You're not even Italian, you're _Japanese_—"

He was still holding the thermos out, smile not wavering one iota. "Doesn't mean I can't try." And he didn't budge, not until she finally took the thermos out of his hands and unscrewed the cap.

"You spiced it all wrong," she told him, irrationally annoyed by the things she could smell in the steam—basil, not fresh, for one, and maybe oregano too. "You have to let the flavors of the vegetables show through. The herbs should be an accent."

Yamamoto looked briefly crestfallen. "Maybe I translated the recipe wrong?" he hazarded, rubbing the back of his neck. "My English isn't great..."

Bianchi turned away from the door and rummaged up a spoon. "You can't learn cooking like this from a _recipe_." She tasted the soup and made a face. "Especially not recipes in English." Far too many of them had been adjusted to suit other palates. God love the States (someone had to).

He drooped like a disappointed puppy. "Really? What if I found a better recipe?"

"Not even then," Bianchi told him, screwing the cap back onto the thermos and dropping it back into his hands. "It has to come from the heart—" She stopped herself, knowing that she'd just managed to say exactly the wrong thing.

Yamamoto was practically _sparkling_ at her. "From the heart? That sounds like _your_ specialty, Bianchi-san!"

Oh, fuck. Fuck, no. "Maybe," she said, sensing doom looming ahead. "So what's your point?"

Yamamoto gave her a look that was appallingly earnest. "Do you think you could give me a few tips?" he asked, eyes big and brown and pleading. "Please?"

Bianchi hardened her heart against him and shoved him towards the door. "Absolutely not," she told him, and shut the door in his face.

* * *

Her apartment's little kitchenette was way too small for two people, so Bianchi dragged the table over and made Yamamoto do his prep work there as she stood over him, wondering just how the Yamamoto Reality Deflection Field _worked_, anyway. She was willing to bet Hayato had theories and diagrams to explain it, and made a mental note to ask him sometime, because she hadn't had the least intention of giving in to Yamamoto's pleas for cooking lessons.

And yet here he was, cheerfully dicing vegetables and talking about baseball as his fingers flew.

Bianchi was going to make him do all the dishes; it seemed like just compensation for her time and aggravation. At least he already knew what he was doing with the knife, she thought, keeping a close eye on the vegetables he was dicing almost as fast as he was talking.

When he was done, he grinned up at her. "Now what?"

It was a good thing they were friendly, was all she could say about the process of cramming herself into the kitchenette with him, supervising as he sweated the onions in a little olive oil and then seasoned them before adding the stock and the vegetables. Some of them had to come out of cans—no other way for it, really, with home half the world away—but it still hurt her soul a little bit to do it. "Now taste that," she ordered him, and he did. "How does it taste?"

He wrinkled his nose. "Needs a little salt."

"Then add some."

She kept a close eye on him, but he knew better than to just dump a whole handful in. He tasted it again, too, after he had, and nodded. "Better," he pronounced.

Bianchi tried it, too—it wasn't _too_ bad, anyway. "Yeah, okay," she said, and pointed at the sink. "Now get to work on the clean-up while this simmers."

And he did, without a breath of complaint. Well, Reborn had said he was a good student, she thought, leaning in the door and watching him scrub the cutting board. He'd followed her directions scrupulously, and had asked a couple of reasonably intelligent questions about the order of the steps, and had a knack for the kitchen... "So why Italian?"

Yamamoto leaned over and gave the soup a stir before he answered, and then smiled over his shoulder at her. "Well, mafia game. Seemed like I ought to learn. And food is important. Lots of things in food. Tells you a lot about people."

Then he went back to the dishes, without bothering to complain that he was doing the dishes from her breakfast and last night's dinner, too.

Bianchi watched him, thoughtful, and decided that he was a lot more dangerous than anyone other than Reborn, and maybe Squalo, gave him credit for. And no matter what those two thought, it wasn't because of that sword of his by any means.

"Just remember that I'm only teaching you how to make this soup," she said, because she had to draw the line somewhere.

Yamamoto laughed and nodded over the sink. "Sure, Bianchi-san, anything you say!"

* * *

"Okay, seriously, stop getting your recipes off the internet," Bianchi told Yamamoto the day he showed up with something that purported to be pasta and was mostly a mess of cheese and noodles and way too much meat and tomatoes. "This is ridiculous."

"Well, if I don't get my recipes from the internet, where _can_ I get them?"

His smile was disingenuous; Bianchi _saw that_ and recognized it for what it was and _still_ fell for it. "I'll teach you," she said, grimly, because that was better than letting him foist pseudo-Italian on the world, even if he did have the potential to maybe someday become as good a cook as she was (if there could be such a thing).

"It's no wonder you drive Hayato crazy," she said, a few lessons in, watching him crush tomatoes against the side of the pan. When Yamamoto looked up, eyebrows raised and forehead crinkled in what probably _was_ honest puzzlement, Bianchi shrugged at him. "You make it look like everything you do comes naturally to you." Surely it didn't, however easy he made it look. After all, she was teaching him just now, even if all he really needed was for her to point him in the right direction and then stand by to pull him back from the edge of regrettable enthusiasm. He was still looking perplexed. "Hayato has to work hard for everything he does," she explained. "But he never sees you trying to figure stuff out." Let alone _failing_, when if there was anything Hayato knew how to do, it was fail, pick himself back up off the ground, and then try again.

Yamamoto looked back down at the saucepan, tracing figure eights in it with the spoon. "He just doesn't know where to look." His smile was wry. "He should try training with me. Then he'd see."

And Hayato was as likely to do that as he was to swallow a live eel. Pity, that. "Just an observation," Bianchi told him.

"Mm. Come here and taste this and tell me what you think."

Bianchi did, criticized it, and then let him change the subject into a discussion of why it was called putanesca.

* * *

The thing was, Bianchi didn't exactly know what it was that made giving Yamamoto cooking lessons something she'd gone along with so easily. Part of it was that there was no letting him run around cooking mediocre Italian and proclaiming that he knew what he was doing, of course. But really, he picked up the basics after a few lessons, and could have gone his own way without too much trouble. Sometimes Bianchi wished that he would have, especially when he made one of his intuitive leaps and came up with something ingenious—a sauce with just the right twist of salty capers and bright lemon and pepper that tasted so much like _home_ that it made her heart ache, for example. She'd sent him away early that evening, claiming a headache, and had done the dishes herself.

But he didn't say anything about stopping and neither did she, even after that, and they learned how to negotiate the cramped space of her kitchenette together, fitting themselves around each other as they cooked and talked. Yamamoto asked a lot of questions about Italy. Bianchi supposed he was right to be curious, since that was where the course of his life was going to take him, and that he was preparing himself accordingly.

Then one afternoon he looked up from checking on the soup to say, "You really miss it, huh?"

"...it's home," Bianchi told him, caught off-guard.

Yamamoto took that with a nod. "You don't get to go back till Tsuna does, huh?"

Bianchi knew she was staring. "How do you figure that?"

His grin was cheeky. "You stopped talking about killing Tsuna and rescuing Reborn about the time Mukuro showed up, you know? So I kind of figured all that must have been an excuse."

"Brat," Bianchi told him, neither confirming his guess nor denying it.

"Well, yeah." His grin stretched a notch wider. "But I also know Reborn's been an Arcobaleno for years now, and you're only a couple of years older than me. I can do the math."

He really was a brat. "You haven't shared your math with anyone else, have you?"

He blinked at her, looking just a little offended. "No, of course not."

"Well, good." Bianchi gave him a look, the most serious she could manage, and he looked back, steadily enough. "It's an asinine cover story, but it _is_ a cover story."

Yamamoto nodded, clearly satisfied. "Yeah, I'll keep on keeping my mouth shut." He gave the soup a stir, tasted it, and turned the heat down a bit. "But you're basically stuck here, huh?"

"That's putting it a bit strongly." She'd agreed to the mission, had known it could end up taking a long time. A person couldn't be stuck doing something she'd gone into with open eyes.

Yamamoto looked at her again, and then his mouth quirked, wry. "Maybe. Here, tell me what you think about this."

Bianchi did, considering whether to let him get away with trying to change the subject, and said, "You know you're going to be stuck there whenever Tsuna finally goes, right?" It'd be another year or two, however long it took Tsuna to graduate and get himself squared away, but it wasn't going to be too much longer.

"Yeah, I know." Yamamoto balanced the spoon across the edge of the pot and leaned himself against the counter opposite her. "But it'll be with friends who're just as stuck as I am, and I figure I'll get by. Tousan has promised to visit, too." He grinned, then. "Besides, Reborn makes it sound like I'm going to be too busy to get homesick."

Lord, had she ever sounded that young? Probably, and wasn't that just a humbling thought. "It's possible, I suppose."

Yamamoto just nodded, and said, "Hey, if you'll move out of the way, I'll get started on the dishes."

* * *

"Oh, don't be ridiculous," Bianchi said when Yamamoto showed up after the thing with the Cetrulli, his arm still in a sling and a bag of vegetables in his good hand. "How the hell are you supposed to do anything without one of your hands?" Especially when it'd been a near thing whether he'd get to keep that arm after the Cetrulli's pet assassins had nearly taken it off. Thank goodness for Sun Flames.

"I thought that maybe you might do the prep work today?" Yamamoto hefted the bag and gave her a hopeful smile. "Or else all this is going to go to waste."

"Then you shouldn't have bought it, idiot." Bianchi stood aside from the door anyway, letting him in and taking the bag from him as he exchanged his shoes for the slippers that she'd given up and started keeping for him. Upon investigating the bag, she added, "What the hell are we supposed to make out of this stuff, anyway?"

Yamamoto beamed at her. "I thought that maybe you would like to learn a little Japanese cooking."

Bianchi stared at him, wondering whether he'd finally lost his excuse for a mind. "What the hell?"

His smile didn't waver. "Well, like you said, there isn't much I can do with one hand, so. Seemed like a good time to return the favor."

"What even makes you think I want to learn how to cook Japanese?" There wasn't any reason to be so irritated by the assumption, no logical reason anyway, but there it was.

"Nothing, really, but I thought I should probably offer. And I didn't want to skip our lessons for however long it takes this to heal." Yamamoto patted his sling, still smiling good-naturedly.

"Then maybe you shouldn't have let yourself get all tangled up with Bruiser Caraceni like an idiot," Bianchi snapped.

Yamamoto blinked and then laughed. "You sound just like Gokudera when you say things like that," he marveled.

"Oh, don't you even start the big dumb jock routine with me, mister." Bianchi brushed past him and dumped the bag on the table. "That was a damn stupid thing to do and you know it."

"Well, it worked, didn't it?"

The hell of it was that it had, at least long enough for Tsuna to get a shot in, which Bianchi supposed had been the point. She still shook her head over it as she ducked into the kitchenette for the cutting board and a knife. Yamamoto pulled out a chair and sat, looking thoughtful. "I guess I hadn't really thought about him mangling my arm like that."

"You should have," Bianchi told him, still angry enough to shake the knife at him to underline the point. "Damn it, you have to start thinking things through. There are lots of people out there who are plenty capable of killing you, you idiot, so you need to be more careful."

His smile was rueful. "Yeah. I know. Heard that a lot lately."

Bianchi put the knife down so she could reach over and smack him. "Then start listening, dumbass, or the next time it'll be your _head_."

He didn't stop smiling, even as he rubbed his head. "Yes, Bianchi-san."

Bianchi glared at him, but as always, Yamamoto failed to give any sign of whether the lesson was going to stick. Finally she dumped out the bag of vegetables. "Okay, so what the fuck am I doing with these?"

At least chopping vegetables was therapeutic enough.

* * *

Eventually it occurred to Bianchi to ask, "Why are we still doing this?" It wasn't that she minded the fact that Yamamoto kept showing up at her apartment a couple of times a week to cook and eat dinner with her, but they'd left the pretense of it being about cooking lessons behind them any number of months ago.

The look Yamamoto gave her then was bright and uncomprehending; Bianchi distrusted it immediately. "What do you mean, Bianchi-san?"

Bianchi put her fork down and gave him a long, steady look. After a minute of that, he began to look a little shifty around the eyes, and she pounced. "I mean it. Why are we still doing this? Don't you—" Bianchi paused, considering him "—have things you ought to be doing with Tsuna? Or shouldn't you be spending time with your dad, or something?" God knew Tsuna was growing like a weed, and that his high school graduation was just around the corner. And once that was past, it wouldn't be long before Tsuna would be off to Italy and the Vongola and everything else that entailed.

"Tsuna doesn't want me around all the time. Kyouko-san, you know? And I spend plenty of time with Tousan." Yamamoto shrugged. "He says he can't wait to get me out from underfoot." He scratched his chin. "He says he's going to turn my bedroom into a studio and take up painting."

She never did stop being impressed by his skills at conversational judo, even when she wasn't letting him distract her from the subject at hand. "I'm sure he'll enjoy that." Bianchi folded her arms and kept staring at him. "So of all the possible people in the world that you could be spending time with, you choose me?"

Yamamoto blinked at her and said, "Well, yes?"

Bianchi snorted at him. "Good Lord, you really need to find yourself a hobby, or a girlfriend, or something."

Yamamoto laughed softly and rested his chin in his palm. "The only girls I know are Kyouko-san, and Haru-chan, and Chrome, and you." He grinned. "Tsuna would be really sorry about crispifying me if I made a pass at Kyouko-san, but he'd still crispify me. And Haru-chan is having way too much fun stalking your brother for me to interfere with that. Chrome is, um, kind of preoccupied with Mukuro most of the time, and besides, I'm not sure I'd want to date both of them, and you..." His shrug was elaborate. "I'm pretty sure you're not interested, or I'd have already asked you out by now." He sighed. "I'm probably going to have to take up boys, aren't I?"

Bianchi found that she was staring, and not because she wanted to unnerve him. "Me?" she said, incredulous. "I'm older than you!"

"Not that much older. I asked your brother." Yamamoto shrugged again. "It wouldn't bother me, and besides, you're my friend and I like you." His smile turned wry. "But I kind of already figured out that you weren't thinking of me like that, so it's okay." He waved his hand, dismissing the idea as easily as that. "But yeah, a girlfriend. Probably not going to happen in the near future." He wrinkled his nose, thinking. "Not that I have a lot of options if I decide to try boys, either. What do you think, would Hibari just kill me outright if I made a pass at him, or would he be surprised enough to hold off on that while he tried to figure out what I was up to, first?"

"If I hadn't already known you were crazy, this would be all the proof I'd need," Bianchi told him, pressing her fingers against her forehead to stave off the headache that dealing with Yamamoto's logic could sometimes induce. "You go to an entire high school filled with girls and boys. Why not date one of _them_?"

"...you've never spent a lot of time with people outside the mafia game, huh?" Yamamoto shook his head. "It doesn't work very well, you know? Most girls don't understand why you had to break a date because the Cetrulli were trying to kill Tsuna again. And they don't get Family." His smile was full of regrets. "It's better not to try, after a while. Doesn't matter how good everything else is, if they don't understand that." He heaved a sigh that had probably come up all the way from his toes. "It's too bad. I really _liked_ getting to have sex."

The conversation got more surreal every time he opened his mouth. "I should have let you change the subject when I had the chance," Bianchi decided, rubbing her forehead. "You realize that getting a girlfriend—"

"Or a boyfriend!" he interjected, grinning. "I don't think being picky is going to help me out here."

"—or a boyfriend, right," Bianchi said, a trifle weakly in the face of such a cheerful espousal of pragmatic bisexuality. "You know that getting a girlfriend or a boyfriend isn't the same thing as getting laid, right?"

"Of course I know that!" Yamamoto looked indignant. "But you have to admit, the chances of the one do kind of go up with the other." He leaned back in his chair, rubbing his chin. "And Reborn did kind of tell us to be careful of one night stands. Said the Seventh lost a Guardian that way. Besides..." His voice trailed off and pink finally dusted his cheeks. "Well, never mind."

"No, do go on," Bianchi urged him, fascinated by this turn of events. What could he possibly find to be embarrassed about when they were already this far down the rabbit hole? "Besides, _what_?"

He cleared his throat and went a little pinker as he looked aside. "I kind of figure it should be more special than that."

Bianchi blinked and forced her giggle to come out as a cough. "So you're a romantic, is what you're saying."

"Yeah, kind of, I guess." He rubbed the back of his neck, definitely red now. "That's not a _bad_ thing."

He said it so defensively that Bianchi could tell that he'd taken some grief for it. "No," she said, the urge to laugh ebbing. "It's not a bad thing at all. Somebody is going to be lucky to get you, one of these days. And, remember this. There'll be plenty of people who understand Family where you're going."

Yamamoto brightened at that. "Yeah, I was kind of counting on that. Anyway, so that's why I don't think finding a girlfriend or a boyfriend is going to happen soon. And besides, I _like_ making dinner with you." He stopped and gave her an uncertain look. "But if you're tired of doing this, I guess—"

Right, time to head that off before he could get too far along and drown in his own good intentions. "I'm not tired, I was just curious, that's all, so don't be stupid."

His eyes cleared. "Oh, well, okay. Good." He beamed across the table at her. "So, I think it's my turn to do the dishes?"

"Yeah," Bianchi said, shoving her plate across the table to him and watching him take it up.

As he did, a sudden thought emerged from her amusement to catch her unawares: _was_ she really not interested?

* * *

Hayato had suggested, more than once, that Yamamoto's brand of insanity was communicable; Bianchi had always been entertained by his frustration. Now that Yamamoto had managed to plant a bug in _her_ head, she sympathized with her brother far more than she'd done before.

Either she hadn't noticed the way Yamamoto had grown and filled out over the past few years, or she just hadn't let herself be aware of it—whichever it was, she was paying attention now and finding that she rather liked what she was seeing. He was always going to be lean, but it was the leanness of long muscles and a swordsman's grace, and it looked good on him. So did the economical way he moved, every motion controlled and precise, like he was perfectly aware of his surroundings and in charge of his response to them.

What was really tripping her up, though, was his hands. He had _amazing_ hands, Bianchi discovered, and was appalled at herself. They were graceful and long-fingered, and watching him wield a knife in the kitchen with deft precision gave her a shivery, squirming feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Maybe Hayato was right, she thought distantly, watching Yamamoto lick a spatter of sauce off his fingers and nod over it. Maybe Yamamoto _could_ make people crazy through exposure.

God knew that she'd had plenty of exposure.

Crazy or not, the next question was whether she actually cared.

Yamamoto turned the flame down. "That's going to need to simmer for a while," he pronounced, smiling at her over his shoulder. "Guess we could start the cleanup while we wait—"

No, Bianchi decided, she didn't really care whether this was crazy or not. "Maybe," she said, and reached over to lay her fingers against the back of his hand. "Do you remember what we talked about a couple of weeks ago?" He froze and looked at her, eyebrows climbing. "Who says I'm not interested?"

His eyes went wide. "Bianchi-san...?" he said, more hesitant than she'd ever seen him.

"I'm willing to give it a shot if you are," she told him. God only knew that she'd made plenty worse decisions.

He still looked flummoxed. "I—but—why now?"

"Because I never thought about it before, but now that I have, I like the idea." Bianchi looked at him, studying his surprise. "Or did you not mean it when you said you would have asked me, if it had seemed like I would have said yes?" And if that were the case, she was going to have to explain just why it was not a good idea to tease a hitman.

"No, I meant it...!" he protested. He shook his head, vigorously, like he was trying to clear it, and then gave her a smile that was purely delighted. "I just—you caught me by surprise, you know?" He turned his hand under hers and gripped it. "Really? You mean it?"

"Lesson for life, Takeshi." That seemed right, and so did stepping closer to edge him back against the counter. "Always take a lady at her word."

"Huh, yeah, okay, I can do that." Surprised or not, he was quick to catch on. He dropped his free hand to her waist and used it to draw her against him, smiling down at her with a sort of wonder that Bianchi realized meant that she was going to have to kiss him first.

Bianchi supposed she'd have been tentative too, in his place, and didn't mind it, anyway. Better that than over-eager and presumptuous. She slid a hand up his chest to hook around the nape of his neck, guiding him down to her and holding him still for a kiss. Takeshi's mouth was shy against hers at first, or maybe he was just being careful not to presume too much. Either way, Bianchi stroked her mouth against his, coaxing him into relaxing and kissing back, and murmured encouragement to him when he slid his arms around her to hold her properly and his lips parted for hers.

She'd half-suspected that his talk about other girlfriends and missing sex were at least one part teenage bravado, but he'd learned how to kiss _somewhere_. Once it seemed liked he'd decided that she really did mean it, he responded enthusiastically, stroking his tongue against hers and sliding a hand up her back to cradle her head as his lips moved against hers. "Bianchi-san," he said softly, some breathless span of time later.

"Just Bianchi will do, I think," she told him, taking advantage of the moment to taste the line of his jaw.

Takeshi's breath hitched as she nuzzled his throat. "What changed?" he asked, lifting his chin for her. He was running a hand up and down her back, slowly; it was warm through her shirt.

She'd figured she'd already answered this question, but perhaps he'd been too surprised to listen. "I started paying attention to what was right beneath my nose, that's what." Bianchi glanced up at him, but he seemed to be listening this time. "And I decided I liked what I saw."

"Yeah?" His smile was a little diffident, which charmed her.

"Yeah." Bianchi smoothed her hands down his chest and curved them around his waist, and stepped back, drawing him away from the counter and out of the kitchenette. "Now, you're not going to be so rude as to argue with me about that, are you?"

"No..." He drew the word out, a grin starting to bloom across his face. "I wouldn't dream of it. Where are we going?"

"Where do you think, silly?" It wasn't a large apartment. Hell, it was practically an efficiency, and she'd had to screen her bed off from the rest of the room with a curtain. "I'm not making out in the kitchen when there are more comfortable places available." She ducked under the curtain, pulling him after her, and drew him down to the bed with her.

Takeshi laughed softly, though his eyes were starting to turn hot and a little speculative. "Making out, huh?"

Bianchi grinned at him as she settled herself against the pillows. "Making out, yeah." She pulled him close and stroked a hand up his chest to cup his cheek. "To start with, anyway."

"To start with," he echoed, before she kissed him again. He made a soft sound against her mouth, apparently agreeable enough, and pressed closer, warm and pleasantly heavy.

Bianchi hummed her approval to him when he settled a hand at her waist and stroked the place where her shirt had begun to ride up; that was more like it. His back was pleasingly broad under her hands when she ran them over his shoulders and down his spine, feeling the solid muscle under his shirt. He made a sound against her mouth when she found the hem of his t-shirt and slipped her hands underneath it to stroke her palms against his skin, which jumped and shivered as he sighed.

It seemed to give him the right kind of idea, though, because he moved his mouth along her jaw. "May I?" he asked, lips soft against her ear, and edged his fingertips up her side.

Bianchi had to smile, charmed by that, too. "Of course you may." In fact... She reached for the hem of her shirt and pulled it off herself, tossing it aside. She shook the hair back from her eyes when she was done and smiled at his wide eyes. "Well...?" She caught his hand and returned it to her side.

Takeshi swallowed. "You're so gorgeous." He ran his hand up her side, over her ribs, and surely it was the warmth of it against her skin that made her breath catch, not the unexpectedly earnest compliment.

She covered it by arching into his hand when he cupped her breast, stroking it through the satin of her bra. "You're not so bad yourself," she told him, pulling him close and sliding her hands under his shirt again to touch his chest, exploring the shape of it.

The sound he made was absent, but she found it hard to care as his touch turned bolder and his hands smoothed over her breasts, tracing the shape of them through her bra. He really had done something like this before, Bianchi decided, because he didn't have to fumble much with the catch of the damn thing when he was getting it off her. Just as well; she'd been pawed at once or twice in her time, and this was much nicer.

"Shirt. Off," she told him, before she could get too distracted by how his fingers felt as they explored her breasts, almost as nimble against her skin as they were on his sword or in the kitchen. She emphasized her point by catching his hands and removing them from her chest, and smiled when Takeshi whined in protest. He gripped his collar and tugged the t-shirt off with an impatient little gesture that stole her breath with its impatient, careless grace, and yeah, he really had filled out nicely, hadn't he? "Much better," she told him, pulling him against her, humming with the slide of skin against skin.

Takeshi murmured something—her name, barely coherent—and kissed her again, open and hungry and maybe even a little desperate. That wasn't really surprising, considering the color running high in his cheeks and the hardness pressing against her hip. But perhaps she had better do something about that.

"Need some help with this?" she asked him, running her hand over the front of his jeans.

He shuddered, hips pressing against her palm as she undid his jeans. "Bianchi... oh... oh, please..."

"Shh, I've got you." Bianchi wrapped her arm around Takeshi, tucking his face against her shoulder and stroking his hair as she dipped her hand inside his jeans and found his cock. He groaned against her shoulder, breath hot against her skin, clinging to her as she ran her fingers over hot, silky skin. She curled them around him, stroking him as he groaned her name. Then his hips jerked against hers as he gasped, going tense against her, just about as quickly as she'd expected him to.

Boys, Bianchi thought, wry, and wiped her fingers clean as Takeshi panted and shivered against her. She gathered him to her, running her hands over his back, until he managed to recover some of his equanimity.

"Oh, man," he breathed, lifting his head to give her a hangdog, guilty look. "I didn't—you—um. Sorry?"

"What for? I knew what I was doing, silly." Better a quick handjob than having him go off like a shot the second he was inside her. "Now come here and kiss me again."

He still looked sheepish, but did what he was told. "Yes, Bianchi-san."

His mouth was still eager against hers; Bianchi sighed into it, pleased, and let herself relax into the warmth of it and the way his fingers were moving over her skin, stroking her breasts until she was breathless and aching with how much she wanted more. "You can touch more than that," she told him, when it was beginning to seem like he was going to be content to play with her breasts forever. She took one of his hands and set them on the button of her jeans, just in case he needed a hint.

Takeshi made a sound that didn't really have words in it, but was enthusiastic nonetheless, and undid her jeans. Bianchi wriggled helpfully as he worked her jeans and panties down her hips and kicked them off. Then Takeshi stopped, looking at her with wide eyes. "Wow," he said, hands light on her knees. "I—wow."

If she wasn't careful, this was going to go straight to her head. Bianchi shifted, drawing a knee up in invitation. "Come on," she murmured to him.

Takeshi smiled at her, eyes still a little wondering, and ran his hands up her thighs. Bianchi sighed as he did, eyes sliding shut as he slid his fingers against her and sensation fired along her nerves. "Oh... oh, yeah..." She closed a hand on his shoulders as he moved his fingers against her, inexpert but making up for it by how responsive he was to the sounds she made as he explored her. "There," she breathed, shuddering when he found her clit and sparks exploded up her spine. "God, Takeshi..."

The hesitation disappeared from his fingers and she groaned as he began to stroke her, slow and firm, just the way she liked, until she was panting for breath with the building pleasure. She opened her eyes and saw that he was watching her, a little line of concentration drawing itself between his eyebrows, and that made her shiver, _want_ coiling itself tight, low in her belly. "Inside me," she breathed, and watched him nod.

Bianchi groaned as he pressed his fingers into her and rocked her hips up against the pressure of them, trying to find the right angle for them. She gasped when she did and pleasure flared up her spine. "There, _yes_, she told him, clutching his shoulder and squeezing her eyes shut as he followed her lead and worked his fingers against her, until it was too much to stand and she came unstrung, shaking herself to pieces against his hand.

When she opened her eyes again, Takeshi was still watching her, but his eyes had gone soft. "Was that okay?" he asked, when he saw that she was looking.

"Perfect," Bianchi told him, pulling him down and kissing him, feeling as though she were glowing with satisfaction—well, damn, no wonder, considering how long it'd been since she'd done this. Jesus. No wonder she'd made up her mind about Takeshi so damn fast.

Takeshi made a startled sound when she ran her hands down his back and slid them under his jeans and underwear, pushing them down so she could squeeze his ass. "Bianchi...!" he said, half-laughing.

"What?" she asked, squeezing it again—it was as nice a handful as it looked, she decided. God bless athletically-inclined boys. "I told you I liked what I saw when it actually occurred to me to look."

Takeshi raised his head and looked at her for a moment before he smiled, small and pleased. "Guess I should have come out and said something a while ago, huh?"

Bianchi snorted at him. "Yeah, pretty much." She raised her face to his and kissed him again, lingering. "But this works, too, right?"

He smiled. "Yeah, it does."

"Good," Bianchi said, satisfied, and wound a leg around his hips. "Now shut up and kiss me again."

"_Just_ kiss you?" Takeshi asked, voice dropping as she pressed against him, rubbing against the hardness of his cock.

"Well, for starters," Bianchi murmured, running her hands up his back.

"Okay, I can do that," Takeshi said, and did.

**end**

As always, comments are lovely!


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